Bill Aims to End Smoking by Inmates

California prisoners would be forbidden to smoke -- and required to kick the habit cold turkey -- under a bill that passed its first test in the state Assembly on Tuesday.

Citing rising health-care costs, the bill’s author said his measure was not intended to further punish inmates but rather to make their lives -- and the lives of guards exposed to second-hand smoke -- healthier.

Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City) also said his legislation, passed by the Public Safety Committee, could save the state as much as $280 million a year in inmate medical costs, though the Department of Corrections could not confirm that figure.

“This is a win, win, win for California,” Leslie said. “In this year of fiscal crisis, we should take every opportunity to save this kind of money and create a healthier life for the prisoners we’re responsible for housing.”

Critics, however, objected to the bill because it would provide no medical or psychological help for inmates as they attempt to quit a highly addictive habit.

“There is no nicotine gum, no patch, no smoking cessation program offered here,” said Jim Lindburg of the Friends Committee on Legislation, a Quaker group that seeks just treatment of prisoners, among other Californians. “Smoking is a serious health problem, and we need to take a wiser approach to it.”

Others predicted that banning cigarette sales at prison canteens would make a pack of smokes more valuable than ever as contraband. In some states that have bans in place, cigarettes are hot commodities on the black market, with one smoke sometimes fetching as much as $60. Some states also reported a dramatic rise in assaults after the ban.

In California, smoking is already prohibited at eight of the state’s 32 prisons -- those that serve as medical facilities or as reception centers for incoming inmates. At one, Wasco State Prison in Kern County, inmates staged a brief strike, refusing to report to their jobs, the day after the ban was imposed.

At the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, a ban imposed four years ago created “some major tensions” initially, recalled prison spokesman Lt. Steve Norris.

“There was anger, there was frustration, there was a change in attitudes, but that’s gone now,” Norris said. He added that although smoking has declined considerably among inmates, violations of the ban are common, and cigarettes sell for $10 apiece on the black market.

“They’re brought in by visitors and by outside work crews,” Norris said, and are either smoked or sold by enterprising prisoners. Inmates manage to smoke surreptitiously in housing units and elsewhere with the help of “spotters” who watch out for correctional officers, he said.

If it passes in the Legislature and is signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bill (AB 384) would add California to the list of 17 states that ban tobacco use in prisons. The ban, which also would cover California Youth Authority facilities, would not affect prison staff.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections said more than half of the state’s 161,000 prisoners are smokers. Though the department has no official position on the bill, Margot Bach said, “It’s a good idea to get people off cigarettes because it adds to their health problems and it’s an expensive habit.”

Bach added a historical note: “In the old, old, old days, cigarettes were among items provided to inmates. You got your three hots, a cot and your cigarettes,” she said.

The health-care budget for inmates has been soaring in recent years, from $566 million in 2000 to $975 million this year. Leslie calculates that a smoking ban would cause a related decline in smoking-related diseases and save the state “big dollars.”

His figures come from a state Department of Health Services study that found each California smoker racks up $3,500 per year in smoking-related health-care costs. If that figure were applied to inmates who smoke, the saving would be about $280 million, Leslie said.

Only one member of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles), voted against the bill.

Also passing the committee Tuesday was a measure that would redefine the purpose of imprisonment under California law to include the word “rehabilitation” rather than simply “punishment.”

The bill, by Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood), comes in the wake of a report by a government watchdog agency that found California parolees leave prison unprepared to find work, stay off drugs and function on the outside. As a result, the report by the Little Hoover Commission found, two out of three ex-convicts wind up back in prison.

Changing the language, Koretz hopes, will encourage more efforts to rehabilitate inmates.